Poet Mary O'Donnell, for example, has suggested "poetess", "authoress", "hysterical" and "as a mother"; but to me, these are bugbear words and phrases rather than tripping-up ones – she's disturbed by the way they're used rather than confused by the act of reading them.

There is a "poetess" in the wilds of nineteenth-century frontier Canada ( "Meneseteung"), a violinist in the 1940s who dreams of leaving her baby outside to die ( "My Mother's Dream"), and an aging piano teacher, Miss Marsalles, whose popularity is waning ( "Dance of the Happy Shades"):

I loved that anthology, and, although an 11-year-old aspiring "poetess", I wasn't alarmed that women were more often the subjects than the authors (what's so bad about being a rarity?) but, yes, it was refreshing suddenly to be presented with this notion that the poet's desired woman might not exist at all; that she might be a figment of his imagination.

Often Munro is historical and modern simultaneously, as in her depiction of the doctor who treats the nineteenth-century frontier "poetess": "He believes that her troubles would clear up if she got married.